ct in its beauty? You flash pearls, emeralds, and rubies before
my astonished eyes: how should I decide to prefer the emerald to the
pearl? I am transported by admiration of the whole necklace."

"Well, as for me, there is something I am more proud of than of all my
sonnets, and which has done much more for my reputation than my verses."

I opened my eyes wide, "What is that?" I asked. The master looked at me
mischievously; then, with that beautiful light in his eyes which fires
his youthful countenance, he said triumphantly--

"It is my discovery of the etymology of the word haricot!"

I was so amazed that I forgot to laugh.

"I am perfectly serious in telling you this."

"I know, my dear master, of your reputation for profound scholarship:
but to imagine, on that account, that you were famed for your discovery
of the etymology of haricot--I should never have expected it! Will you
tell me how you made the discovery?"

"Willingly. See now: I found some information respecting the haricot
while studying that fine seventeenth-century work of natural history by
Hernandez: _De Historia plantarum novi orbis_. The word haricot was
unknown in France until the seventeenth century: people used the word
_feve_ or _phaseol_: in Mexican, _ayacot_. Thirty species of haricot
were cultivated in Mexico before the conquest. They are still known as
_ayacot_, especially the red haricot, spotted with black or violet. One
day at the house of Gaston Paris I met a famous scholar. Hearing my
name, he rushed at me and asked if it was I who had discovered the
etymology of the word haricot. He was absolutely ignorant of the fact
that I had written verses and published the _Trophees_."--

A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his famous sonnets as
second in importance to the nomenclature of a vegetable! I in my turn
was delighted with his _ayacot_. How right I was to suspect the
outlandish word of American Indian origin! How right the insect was, in
testifying, in its own fashion, that the precious bean came to us from
the New World! While still retaining its original name--or something
sufficiently like it--the bean of Montezuma, the Aztec _ayacot_, has
migrated from Mexico to the kitchen-gardens of Europe.

But it has reached us without the company of its licensed consumer; for
there must assuredly be a weevil in its native country which levies
tribute on its nourishing tissues. Our native bean-eaters have mistaken
the stranger;